Artists Forced To Vacate Studio In Old Building

FORT LAUDERDALE — Joe Molinaro knew it was time to move when the men from the Broward school system pulled up in a van and began unloading plywood and tools.

By Tuesday afternoon, the small artist colony Molinaro established in a vacant downtown storefront was boarded up and abandoned, just like most other buildings along Brickell Avenue, the city`s first main street.

The six or seven artists who shared studio space in the old Viele Building at 201 Brickell Ave. worked there rent free and knew it would end eventually. They didn`t expect it would be so sudden.

``If they would give us two or three weeks, we could find another place,`` said LaMonte Anderson, a painter who used the makeshift studio for the past four months.

``We`re scattering right now,`` said Molinaro, a ceramic artist and art teacher at Broward Community College. ``We`re hoping to stay together as a group, somewhere.``

The School Board, which has acquired several buildings in the historic district, condemned the Viele Building in June and evicted the tenants. But the artists, most of them teachers at area colleges, stayed.

``We paid all the utilities,`` Molinaro said. ``And since we`ve been in there, they`ve had no problems with vagrants or people breaking in. In the half that was boarded up, they had people starting fires and breaking in.``

But technically, the artists are trespassing, School Board attorney Robert Vignola said.

``The School Board is within its rights to ask them to leave anytime they want,`` he said.

The board had planned to build an administrative office tower on the property, but those plans are on hold. City officials, hoping to preserve the historic buildings, have offered to buy them if the board will move to an adjacent site.

The value of the condemned Viele property must be set by a jury. That trial begins on Monday, which the artists say is the reason they are being evicted so suddenly.

``We suspect that if a jury was to go through and look at the space while we`re in there, it will look like a usable space,`` Molinaro said. ``If they get us out, it makes the place look dark and treacherous and it will be less valuable.``

Safety Department Director Judith Hunt, who Molinaro said ordered them to leave, did not return a phone call Tuesday afternoon.

Vignola said he didn`t know why the artists were evicted this week. However, he said property appraisals done by the School Board and the property owners would probably determine the land`s value.

``I don`t think the presence or absence of these individuals would affect it one way or another,`` he said.